Mental coin flips

[Daxonovitch]

An interesting situation came up for me yesterday on a $30 STT, it was duplicated later that night by one of my friends in the 200+15. Both happened on Party.

My situation ($30+3 STT): I have T1100, raiser has T1300. I've got KK. He raises to 75, I reraise to 350, he reraises a little more than the minimum to 800.

I pause about 3 seconds here, thinking briefly maybe I'm beat, and actually ask him "So you've got aces huh?". I'm certainly not good enough to get away from KK though, and I reraise push, and he calls with AA.

My anonymous friends situation ($200+15 MTT): He has T5500, raiser has T7000. He has KK. Raiser makes it 3xBB, 450 to go. He makes it 1k to go, and is reraised all in (and calls). Raiser has AA.

Both of these situations are more or less identical: the raiser has you covered, the raiser made 2 raises (the first of which was small and "callable"), and the raiser was first to act in both situations. The only difference is the buy-in.

Here's the question. I can only speak for myself, but at this point I'm thinking in my head of the possible hands he could have (since I have essentially no read on him yet).

AA: 50%
KK: 20%
AK: 15%
QQ: 5%
AQ 5%
Some random garbage like 77: 5%

In my situation, I'm out T300 facing a 500 reraise (and most likely a push situation). To me, the choices are push or fold.

If he's got AA, I'm beat and lose all my chips (barring a goofy set suckout).

If he has anything else, I'm in great shape.

It's early in the tournament, and so it seems practical for me to lay down KK preflop, as I'm considering this a "mental coin flip". I'm a 50% favorite to double up or go home. It's just that the coin flip doesn't lie in the cards, it lies in my read of this player and situation.

To me, this is an easy fold when analyzed like this. Obviously, I couldn't do it, and pushed. Is it reasonable to distribute the possible hands like I did (expecting him to have AA 50% of the time, given the action) or am I making monsters out of molehills? Bonus question: does that distribution change for my friend in the 200+15? He was moved tables recently, so assume little-to-no read on the player (about halfway through the tournament).

Thoughts?

[fnord_too]

In my experience on party, I think without a read your distribution is off. I think I have seen this over the top play done with less than aces more than 50% of the time. I haven't taken any statistics on it though, so this is subjective. People do the damndest things. As to whether you can expect the person to have aces more in the 200+15, I don't know. I have only played in a couple of those so far, but I have seen some rather curious betting at times.